Week 9 Reading - Why We Play Games by Nicole Lazzar (Additional Reading)

Players play games to change or structure their internal experiances' (2004:8)
What are these experiences and how can they categorised?
Does this accord with your own experiences of Gameplay?

Why We Play Games - Four keys to More Emotion without Story, by Nicole Lazzaro

The Player Experience:
Emotion
- Anger
- Excitement
- Sadness
- What makes failing 80% of the time fun?
- Do people play to feel emotions as well as a challenge?

• "People play games to create moment-to-moment experiences".

To overcome:
- Game challenge
- Seeking relief from every-day worries
"The day joy of figuring it out".

Storyline - Triggering emotions?
Graphics? - Fun - Value Proposition?

1. What players like most about playing?
Hard Fun:
- Emotions from meaningful challenges, strategies and puzzles.
- Creates emotion by structuring experience towards the pursuit of a goal.
Easy Fun:
- Grab attention with ambiguity, incompleteness and detail.
- Maintain focus with player a sense of attention rather than a winning condition.
Altered States:
- Generate emotion with perception, thought behaviour and other people.
- "This is why I play games because to me it feels like a sense of escapism/temporary therapy".
The People Factor:
- Create opportunities for player competition, co-operation, performance and spectate.